


love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart

by buckynatalia



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-12 09:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4473740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckynatalia/pseuds/buckynatalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imperator Romanova drives a war rig. One day she smuggles young women out of the citadel, and escaped blood bag Bucky Barnes, ex-assassin and long lost love, ends up trying to help them come out of this alive. </p><p>insp:</p><p>http://nataliaromonov.tumblr.com/post/122867213621/mad-max-fury-road-au-where-imperator-romanova</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Imperator

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a buckynat/mad max playlist, if you want to give it a listen.
> 
> http://8tracks.com/kheleesi/find-what-you-love-let-it-kill-you

1.

Imperator Romanova’s war rig gleamed in the sun, a mass of chrome and dust. She tossed her red hair, and glared out at the crowd surrounding her, a grime-crusted and dehydrated mass. They were chanting her name, hands outstretched.

As if she was something special. Once she’d been one of them, once, a hopeless wanderer speckled in someone else’s blood. A killer for hire, traveling with a lost soldier with a sad smile. She’d been taken when she was young, trained to be a soft-limbed dancer who did as she was told. She bent her head and gritted her teeth and _bore it_.

When the warlord grew tired of her, she wasn’t put to death. Imperators were in high demand.

She kept her eyes on her still steering wheel, a skull emblazoned where her hands rested. Still she sensed his presence.

Way up there, framed by the clouds and craggy rock, a gleaming old man stood, staring down at her. His face was half bone, tubes protruding from it and curling like snakes. Because of him, all of them lived. Because of him, they were all doomed to a half-life in his wasteland. She flipped the kill switches, and her war rig roared to life.

Imperator Romanova could hear it, all steel and guzzoline and barbed wire. She imagined, if you were to cut her open, that’s what her heart would look like.

She pressed down the gas pedal, and she shot forward with a cloud of black smog. A scattering of crow-like War Boys followed her, yelling and whooping. She glanced in the mirror, saw herself through the grit. The Citadel disappeared behind her.

And they were out on the Fury Road, a speck in the wide, golden desert. Out, in search of somewhere to call home.

But freedom was going to take one hell of a fight.

_______

_2._

The powdery white War Boys gazed at his smooth metal arm hungrily, like magpies flocking around a trinket. One was gutsy enough to poke a finger through the bars and trace the outline of the red star emblazoned upon his shoulder. He roared at them, and they skittered away, laughing at him. He thrashed in his cage, in his chains, the tattoos burning on his back.

Universal donor. In a civilized world, that would have been a blessing. Now he was a fucking bloodbag with an expiration date. Bucky Barnes went very still. Utterly limp, in fact.

The young War Boys grew bored, returning to their welding or bleeding or whatever the hell they did in their free time. Bucky grimaced. God, how did he get himself into this one? He felt it all very strongly: the blood draining out of him with a pinch at his neck. His screaming mind. The ghosts calling his name.

He saw flashes, searingly hot behind his eyes.

___The rubble of a destroyed city.__ _

___The stars wheeling over his head._ _ _

___Red hair and lean curves and a wolflike smile. She whispered something in his ear, but he couldn’t hear it, he was too far away._ _ _

___An endless sea of salt and sand._ _ _

The first time he knew he was insane.

___A blue eyed soldier, star on his chest. Blood leaching from a gaping hole in this man's abdomen. A hand, outstretched, before he collapsed into the sand._ _ _

Bucky Barnes’ eyes flew open. Somewhere nearby, a War Boy was shouting, and others joined in. Something about a rogue Imperator. He felt a small uptick in his pulse, a flutter of anticipation. There was nothing worse than the boredom of waiting to die. He was eager for the slightest of happenings.

“Cut him down!” Someone bellowed. And he fell to the floor in a pile of chains and dust, his eyes at someone’s worn silver sneakers. Someone kicked him to his feet.

Five minutes later, he was bound to the front of a car.

His scream was lost in a sea of War Boys’ identical shouts, the roar of a hundred engines drowning him in their exhaust.

__________ _ _

___3._ _ _

___ _

The hold of the war rig was silent, dark, and full of mice droppings. Five girls breathed each other in. The sound of a guitar growling in the distance dug it’s way under their skin. It was ominous and all-encompassing. They couldn’t ignore it.

Someone was singing, or praying, or a combination of the two.

Someone was crying, soft little tears in the dark.

One had her cheek to the floor, burning hot from the sand and engine. She traced invisible designs in the dirt, whispered, _ _ _“All we’ll ever need is each other.”_ _ _

___She repeated it again.___ Imagined a boy with silver hair, at her side, always at her side. _ _ _ _Again._ ___ A pair of twins on a motorcycle, a streak of silver across the dunes. Quicksilver, they called it, a grin on their faces. _ _ __Again.____ They had loved each other so much.

And then their water had run out.

The Citadel had been a shining green speck in the distance, an oasis. It was dangerous, the twins knew. But they had no choice. They were reduced to chapped lips and split hair. Again, she whispered it. They had pushed forward to the waterfall of glistening Aqua-Cola. Two days later, the men on the platform dragged her from the crowd, screaming. They had fistfuls of her lovely brown hair. Pietro had followed her, shouting, climbing onto the platform with a blackened eye and a plea for mercy. So they let him stay: painted him white and taught him how to die for them.

She never saw him again.

______“ _All we’ll ever need is each other._ "_ _ _ _ _ _

“Scarlet Witch,” a voice echoed from across the hold. “You’re driving me mad."

“We’re all mad,” the girl said, a bitter taste flooding her tongue. She peered through a tear in the metal, a hole that let her view a bit of the cracked golden horizon. In the distance, she saw the billowing clouds of dust that the War Boys were kicking up, a monochromatic army of chrome. She wondered if her brother was with them, head shorn, heart changed. It didn’t matter anymore. “And that’s not my name. It’s Wanda.”

She stared into the horizon and tried to imagine a future in which she was happy.

_______She couldn’t._ _ _ _ _ _ _

Wanda tried to recall her brother’s face.

_______She couldn’t._ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________________ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______4._ _ _ _ _ _ _

An hour later, the War Party had caught up.

Guitar blared nearby, the rumble of a hundred engines pounding in her ears. Imperator Romanova stared out her window, at a human hood ornament, his face covered muzzled and chained. His blood, in a clear tube wound back and forth, a lifeline between him and the sickly War Boy inside. A metal arm gleamed in the scorching sunlight.

Fear and rage filled the man’s eyes like storm clouds. They seemed to scream for help.

She knew him. Her soldier from once upon a time.

The Imperator remembered: days on the run, the two of them offing anyone they deemed a threat, killing for food, killing for more bullets, killing because they were in danger. Nights beneath the stars, huddling together for warmth in the back of his Jeep, telling stories of the world that used to be. They had been unstoppable.

Until they were stopped.

 ________Time was such a cruel thing,________ she thought. 

_____________________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


	2. Aqua-Cola

 5.

 

 The sandstorm was the worst she’d seen in years, all purple lightning and booming thunder, staggeringly beautiful yet deadly in all it’s mighty terror. No one could blame nature for it’s destruction. One could only grit their teeth and forge through it.

 

 And should have been afraid, perhaps, staring into the mountainous wall of approaching storm. The Imperator affixed her goggles across her eyes. Mother Nature had never scared her, no matter how much she raged and spat. 

 

  Humans were the ones to take and take and take and never give back.

 

  _Who killed the world?_

 

  Romanova wasn’t scared of a little sand in her hair. She faced the windstorm head on.

 

  The war rig was swallowed whole.

 

 

_________

 

 

 6.

 

  Bucky pulled himself out of the sand, his lips cracked and dry. He did his best to shake the sand from his hair. It was all done, the lightning and the wind whipping at him like claws. The smashed window and sickly War Boy yelling into the void, yelling a name he couldn’t make out.

 

  He sawed at his chains, frantic. 

 

  The goddamn muzzle wouldn’t budge either.

 

  Bucky threw the pasty War Boy over his shoulder, grumbling. He began the long walk towards the shimmering war rig in the distance, hoping it wasn’t a mirage. Something about that woman, red hair cropped short, grimacing. The Imperator. Her face itched at his mind, prompting the voices in his head to shriek ever louder. The sound was deafening. It was far too silent out here.

 

  It was one hell of a walk, and carrying a half-dead kid didn’t help.

 

______

 

 

7.

 

  He approached the Wives looking half-dead, waving a loaded pistol at them. 

 

  Romanova stopped banging the sand out of the rig, stood to face him. The desert was still and gold and shifting, and the sky reeled overhead. The Imperator planted her boots in the sand, ready to fight if need be. Her lips were set in a grimace. “What do you want?” she spat.

  He eyed the stream of Aqua-Cola hungrily. It was crystal, poured over Wanda’s toes, creating a puddle at her feet.  "Water," he grumbled, unsure how to use his tongue.  So they handed over the water. He drank like a dying thing. 

  But then, they were all dying things.  The War Boy lie dead in the sand, still linked to the wandering man.

 

  “Want your chains off?” Wanda asked him, reedy voice carrying against the sand. He grunted his assent. Jess the Spider, with her skinny arms, handed Wanda the loppers, frowning at the intruder. They all watched Wanda cross the length of the War Rig, to where the chain stretched from his hands, and clamped the blades down on an iron link. It fell away with a metallic  _crunch_ , slumping to the ground. 

 

  His eyes drifted back and forth, met the Imperator’s a few feet away. Hers were burning and intelligent, a gray-green that had dimmed ever since the world's end. They'd been emerald, back then. Now they were full of hate and hope and guzzoline.

 

  She thought that this man looked more lost than anything.

 

  ____

 

   8.

 

  “Say, America,” Hawk-Eye said, staring off into the peach horizon. She shaded her eyes with one slim hand. Her voice was high and wavering as a wispy cloud. “Is that just the wind, or a furious vexation?”

 

  America sucked air in through her teeth, glanced over her shoulder to where Hawk-Eye gazed. It was too far to tell, could be the wind kicking itself into a flurry. But god knows Hawk-Eye can see more than the rest of them.

 

____

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be updating this every few weeks, school's starting soon. 
> 
> Hope you guys like it so far.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "my dear, find your love  
> and let it kill you.  
> let it drain you of your all  
> let it cling onto your back  
> and weigh you down  
> to eventual nothingness  
> let it kill you and let it  
> devour your remains
> 
> for all things will kill you  
> both slowly and fastly  
> but it's much better  
> to be killed by a lover."
> 
> -Charles Bukowski

____

 

9.

Imperator Romanova hurled herself at the wandering man with a snarl. He let out a grunt, like an injured animal. They fell onto the hot sand, tumbling over and over and grasping for the gun. Swiftly, she kneed him in the groin, just enough time to crawl to her feet. But now he was pissed, jittery and anxious and about to snuff the life out of her.

Gone was the man with the sparkling eyes, who threw a blanket over her at night. Gone was the soldier that stayed up to keep watch.

A crazed wanderer stood in his place, clunky metal arm full of dirt and oil and lost hope.

“I know you,” she told him through gritted teeth, pinning him down with her thighs, a gun pressed to his forehead. And, goddamn it, her voice broke. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes."

“No,” he hissed, his face blank and angry. She pulled the trigger, ignoring the twist of dread in her gut.

 _Click_. Her eyes widened. The gun was empty.

The Imperator brought the butt of the pistol down to strike his face. There was a sick crack, and the man’s hand closed around her windpipe. They rolled again, all sweat and rough cloth, and this time he was the one holding her down. Her lungs heaved and she gasped for air. Black spots overcame her vision, and his face hovered above her own.

Perhaps this wasn’t the worst way to go. He’d loved her once, hadn’t he?

He coughed like a dying engine. He was being dragged back like a puppet by the strings.The fingers around her throat were torn away, and and oxygen rushed into her again, warm and hot like rum down her throat. A few feet away, Jess and Carol wrenched him back by the chain.

The Imperator scrambled to her feet, walking towards him slow, wiping the blood from her mouth.

James Barnes tore himself away and stood up. He towered over her, all steel and muscle. But she wasn’t afraid, she didn’t back down. She knew what made him tick. She knew how to bring him down.

Romanova took a running leap at him, a starving lioness. Her legs wrapped around his neck, yanked him to the ground with all her weight. He hit the ground hard, sprawled on his back. A hand snaked up and grabbed her ankle just above the boot, and Romanova was falling too.

She smashed her boot into his face, clambering up again.

A gun was hidden in the war rig, right there, a few feet away. She smashed open the compartment with a rock, grabbing the gun inside. Her hand slammed against the side of the war rig, burning against the iron. James stood beside her, grappling for the gun, his breathing uneven. The Imperator cursed through her teeth, because her hands were sweaty and there was sand in her eyes.

The ammo fell onto the ground. They tumbled and kicked and reached, reached, reached. The sky reeled above them. The Wives watched, pale as ghosts at the corner of her eyes.

And then Romanova found her face in the sand, blood dripping through her nose. Inches from her head, a gun fired six times in quick succession. Bullets buried in the sand. They could have been imbedded in her skull.

______

10.

Wanda screamed, piercing the silence. Her dark hair blew in the wind like a warning flag, and in the noon light her eyes almost went red. She screamed something almost incoherent. A word. A name. Pietro.

“Wanda,” rasped the boy, stumbling to his feet. Shorn and powdery white, but still her brother. Still the half of her soul she'd been missing. Wanda ran to him, and they collapsed into the ground, indivisible. The twins knelt in a pool of blood and wet sand. She held her half-dead, dehydrated brother in her arms.

Now, surviving felt worth it.

________

11.

An endless guitar solo droned in the distance. A prickle of terror ran up Romanova’s spine.

Fight or flight. They needed to get the hell out of there, with James or without.

________


End file.
